Deep in the hardwood forest I watch the first orange light crest over the eastern ridge as dawn unfolds casting its warmth on the surface of the yawning Earth. Poplar trunks stand firm above the gold and brown leaf cover that now mulches the hopeful seedlings while granting the white tail deer an auditory advantage over those who would stalk them through the hollers. At this time of year the forest exhales and retreats from the above ground toil of photosynthesis to a season of focus within the dense and teeming skin of the planet. Without the brush and laden bough, one can see for miles across the waves of ridge and ravine. Sound is without obstacle, and seems almost propelled by the chill wind when it punctures the otherwise heavy silence. The feeling is one of calm, of that restfulness that comes when one crawls into bed and their leg muscles finally release the day’s tension. Autumn contains a library of lessons, none of which can be learned until one is still, patient, and not fucking talking.

My year was not what I had planned for it to be. Many tasks remain undone. Our family was interfered with by a local government body, and we are now in the process of installing an overpriced septic system for our cabin. It is a headache, to be sure, dealing with puffed up bureaucrats and their ad hoc adherence to antiquated and at times contradictory laws. As is often the case in this society, compliance is cheaper and faster than justice. Proving to a judge my case that I should not be required to acquire such a system would find me spending more money, time, and personal energy than just going along with the racket that the good old boys and connected families have established in these parts. I have made my peace with the conflict, and am calmly dancing through the hoops laid out for me. When all is said and done, the cabin I built with my two hands will be a legal residence in the event that we ever decide to move and to sell our land. Property value and all that, right?

Here we are again, dear readers, staring down another winter in which we can together reflect on the state of the world, both the portion that modern humans point their attention at, as well as to the far larger portion where, as Cormac McCarthy wrote, “Storms blow and trees twist in the wind, and all of the animals that God has made go to and fro.” Despite a massive downturn in the global economy, money moves and the smokestacks belch their poison. To be sure, man’s world of markets and digital notations percolates. An event is brewing that portends itself in plummeting rig counts and commodity prices. What grand show this event will perform for people rich enough to have a stake in it is to be seen. The rest of us will scrape by like the peasants that we are until even scraping fails, and only bloodletting remains.

Superstorms and hurricanes ravage from Texas to Yemen. Starved and hopeless human beings are playing the only card they have and abandoning the sure death that awaits their children in the war ravaged and drought plagued middle eastern and north African regions. Rich white people who are to blame for such wars, droughts, and famines are bellowing from the America’s, clear across Europe, and down to Australia about the brown victims of centuries of Anglo-capitalism and how they are not supposed to do anything but suffer their circumstances in place. Where these white adherents to national boundary and culture were as the US, UK, and other global powers were setting about to wage war and destabilize governments in these now uninhabitable places, I’m not exactly sure.

This is the crisis unfolding. This is what it looks like. Real life plays out a lot more slowly than the Hollywood scripts that have to crunch collapse adventures into one hundred and twenty minute films complete with explosions, comeuppance, and a love story for the girls. Tracking the decline of global industrial civilization is seemingly gaining in popularity, and it is all too common for those new to such a curiosity to expect an impending grand finale in which all bets are off; the power grid fails, store shelves empty, gas pumps get bagged, and all hell breaks loose in suburban cul-de-sacs where soccer moms in body armor pump 7.62 into hordes of urbanites (read: blacks and latinos…OK, and maybe a few white guys with neck tattoos get plugged for good measure) who are scouring the once idyllic portions of America in search of condensed soup and cheerleaders for their rape rooms.

Instead another year grinds by in which forest fires destroyed more than they ever had in North america, heat waves killed thousands in Pakistan, sea levels continued their upward march, and political institutions seemed ever more and more inept in the face of all the compounding emergencies that industrial civilization faces. Even my own humble region was affected by unseasonable levels of rain this July which were punctuated by a night of flash flooding that tested my mettle and resolve as I spent hours trying to find an unblocked path home.

Of course, we know that there are no solutions, not for the major crises. There is no putting back what is broken, and limits to growth are not optional. They are not suggested daily values. Sustainability isn’t a lifestyle choice. That which cannot be sustained will not be. For us as individuals, families, tribes, and communities, there is only endurance. How do we get by, and not just with the calories in our gut to labor forth, but with the joy in our hearts to make us want to carry on? Times of decline are times of darkening in the human heart and soul. Atrocity follows shortage. A world of hunger, hate, and blood is a world in which human conscience is called upon to rise, to shield, to burn brightly, despite less and less obvious motivation to do so.

The year draws down and grants us all yet another season to breathe. Let us use the time wisely.

It is bitterly ironic that those who have achieved clarity and truth relative to the collapse will have so little to do with the outcome. Those with wisdom are reduced to being impotent spectators of a tragedy they are powerless to prevent.

The magnitude of what needs to be done is enormous, and so it is understandable that a belief we are powerless spectators is widespread. It may be that will come to pass, in which case humanity is doomed. But it doesn’t have to be that way — a global mass movement can force the changes that are necessary. In fact, it only a mass people’s movement that achieve that. An extraordinarily difficult task, one with immense barriers facing it. But what else are we to do?

A global mass movement wint happen. Honestly, if I were king of the earth and every single person was ready to obey me, I wouldntt even know what to tell them all to do. There is no solution that is actually palatable as it involves shutting down global industry.

Hence the name of my blog. The calamity is part of the solution. The random destruction wrought by the Earth herself that pulls the plug on industrial man’s adventure in converting life into products for consumption eliminates the discussion. There is no arguing with a hurricane or a drought or a forest fire.

For every huma who gives a damn and is willing to try to work towards solutions, even the hard and painful solutions, there are hundreds or thousands who will argue that such action is not necessary. There are thousands or millions who will argue that their right to consumption cannot be violated. And there will be PR firms, ad agencies, and slick politicians and teevee talking heads engaging in a full court press to convince anyone who might rise to the occassion, to sit back down again.

I suppose I am too deeply philosophical and profound in my approach to our problems. It’s just that I don’t want to spend my time putting band-aids on a systemic cancer – which is what our society is suffering from. My quest may prove futile, but then again, I am not very good applying first aid anyway. I guess I was born a dreamer, an artist, an impractical type. The things I might be good at, society says it doesn’t need – and convincing them they do really need it is something I am not very suited to either. Telling people they need to devote themselves to learning to Love just doesn’t sell in our world. My feeling is that if they can’t see this simple truth, then they will continue turning this beautiful world into a Hell, and there is little I can do to stop them. This is a sad conclusion for me and for all the precious lives being sacrificed, but it seems to be true, and from this point almost inevitable.

But in spite of what I have said, it behooves me to celebrate all the truth and beauty and goodness that has been, is, and will be – and to share that with those I love as best I can. As ancient gladiators might have said, “We vow to give of our best even in the face of our certain death.” Or as RE is fond of saying. “Into the valley of Death rode the five hundred…”

On the other hand, I happen to have experienced what seemed miracles, so I have no certainty in my pessimism. “Who knows?” could be a useful watchword in this mad world of ours. It even conveys a healthy dose of humility – a useful medicine in an age of escalating hubris.

td0s, you are so wrong dude! I mean about the mandatory romance being for the girls only. In fact, I could lay out a case that men are just as and maybe even more romantically inclined/unrealistic than the ladies, but I don’t want to embarrass the boys with all that emotional stuff. The rest is bang on.

Hey xraymike, how ya doing? I see all your posts on r/collapse, but I can’t comment since I was kicked off many months ago. Funny how crazy assed, blue collar vulgarian Robert Callaghan (I love that man) gets the run of the place while little ole me gets the boot. End times indeed.

There will come a time when the rate of collapse is not slow. The system is very complex, highly interrelated, completely interdependent and stressed. One must conclude catastrophic, cascading, failure is a near certainty and that we are now vulnerable in ways that prior collapsing civilizations were not. We are so much more vulnerable than our parents and they were more vulnerable than our grandparents, let alone earlier centuries.

We have no resilience at all. We have swapped resilience for so called efficiency. We have specialized knowledge but so little of the general practical knowledge of earlier generations. Many of us do not even know how to cook let alone grow food or dress an animal. We know chemical solutions to garden pests and will be lost without our Roundup and Confidor.

Prior collapsing civilizations lost up to 95% of their population, although many died some went elsewhere. Our civilization is global, there is nowhere else to go. The inescapable conclusion is that it will be very nasty, sometime soon.

The uncertainty factor is large in predicting timelines for collapse. The temptation is to give up all hope and despair now to avoid prolonged suffering and the dashing of hopes it involves. Living with uncertainty is difficult but realistic.

Too right. Currently road biking in Mallorca on quiet roads in perfect temperatures. Hopefully chase the warm weather round Europe in Jan for two or three months, climbing and biking. As I write this I am also listening to great music from BBC radio 6 via the internet. Life is good. The apex of the oil age.

Long term, it’s too late. We have to go for broke. Burn all our inheritance of stored energy; keep the unsustainable going for as long as possible or at least to the end of my natural lifetime.

Selfish you all shout. Of course I am. Human Beings, like any other living organism, live to eat and procreate – although the latter is not true for me, luckily. We compete with each other and other living creatures to consume the maximum energy we can with no thought for future generations and without sufficient energy, we die. We have a delusion of being more clever than we really are.

Enjoy the apex of the oil age now while you can but whatever you do, don’t have children; their fate will truly will be wretched. A child born today will live (if they don’t die prematurely) to witness fossil fuel extraction go down to zero, a reduction of the world population to a small fraction of what it is today and a return to a wood burning society. Imagine? I can’t.

“…a return to a wood burning society. Imagine? I can’t.” Ed, it’s not that bad. I am snuggled up to my wood burning stove out here in the forest, and it really feels warm and cozy. When I need to take a shit, I drop it in a ten gallon bucket and cover it with wood ashes and sawdust. When it’s full, I take it out and add it to the compost pile. This is not suffering – this is the good life!

Hi Mike, It’s not a return to a wood burning society, per say, that is alarming; after all it is a state that the Human Race has been in for the vast majority of its time. The most alarming aspect will be the transition back to it, from our current bloated yet temporary fossil fuelled carrying capacity. For example, here in the UK the long term post fossil fuel carrying capacity may only be 20 million. How are we going to transition from our current 65 million (and growing) population, to that by the end of the century? My point is: this transition will not be pleasant.

ps. I said by the end of the century for simplicity but there are others in this forum that think it will happen way before this time.

Ed – I know that only a minute number of neo-luddites will go back to wood burning – that is one of many realities I have had to accept in shelving my best ideas for a better world. Your European tour sounds fascinating. Have a blast!

Nice to see another post here, at last. Nice read TDOS & good comments (and links) everyone. Not that it matters or anyone gives a shit, but i’m in the fast collapse camp (after the food shortages start big time, the grid fails and governments collapse) and see it looming ahead somewhere around 2020.

In the meantime, things are getting “interesting” with the U.S. trying to instigate
WWIII, corporations trying to take over the world (TTIP, etc) and the biosphere degrading steadily by the month. Mass die-offs going on all around us, people risking death to migrate somewhere that could possibly give them a chance, the weather increasingly making it harder to grow crops in many places. It just keeps getting worse, but hasn’t caught up to us just yet.

I dont disagree that such an acceleration is possible, or even probable. But by the time it happens, we will be at least fifteen years past peak oil, meaning that it was in fact, a slow collapse.

I think really we all get that this is an accelerating event. It pops off around the world as various man made and ecological disasters, each of which civilization is less and less able to repair. Finally there is an event that causes damage that cannot be walked away from, which will then have cascading effects.

Nov 13 fri – I woke from a dream this morning. In the dream I was in a mental hospital setting. I was apparently being exposed to a variety of patients in sequence as a form of evaluation or experimental therapy. The last tableau found me snuggling against a heavy blond lady, against her blond hair.

While getting up, I began reflecting that leaving a mental treatment facility only means entering the open air crazy house that is our presumed “normal” world. Our world (of humans) is seriously deranged. The inmates are at pains to act as if this madhouse is ordinary reality, and that all the dangerous craziness we are
enacting is perfectly normal and unavoidable. Those unable to keep up this pretense are relegated to treatment centers – which strive to readjust their patients to the greater madness going on in the outside world. The evidence that one is cured consists of their being able to somehow find a way to tolerate the intolerable organized chaos of everyday life.

Having to live and move and have one’s being in an insane culture is crazy-making. We are all deranged in this world, although some are more distorted than others. Awakening to this fact is difficult and painful. Avoiding this realization is the path that most try to follow – but of course this only locks them more deeply into the madness.

Mass. woman can wear spaghetti strainer in license photo
Lindsay Miller is member of Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

“BOSTON —A Massachusetts woman has won a legal battle to wear a colander on her head in her state driver’s license photo.

Lindsay Miller is a Pastafarian, who are known as members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Pastafarians believe the FSM, as it is called, to be a powerful force.

The secular religion views the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster to be just as probable as the existence of the Christian God, according to an online post by the American Humanist Association, which assisted in Miller’s dispute with the Registry of Motor Vehicles.”

Part of the master plan, Matt. As oil peaks and goes into decline, our transportation will switch energy sources to coal and nuclear (via electricity, hydrogen intermediaries) and to gas (via LPG intermediary). This may stop our fossil fuelled Ponzi scheme from collapsing for a couple of decades if we’re lucky (to the end of my natural lifetime). The downside is that our coal and gas reserves will deplete even faster. One estimate I have read is that coal and gas could all be gone by 2088 if we were to switch our transportation system to coal and gas.

That’s it !! By 2088 we would be back to a wood burning and draught animal society + some legacy renewable and nuclear energy sources (which can never be replaced or decommissioned); able to support only a small fraction of our current population.

There is no master plan. There is only the unpredictable chaotic disintegration of a species and the individuals who are parts of it. A proper sustainable, integrated, overall pattern never developed for humankind. Developing such a master plan is a task still waiting for us to accomplish – as an alternative to extinction.

I was being sarcastic about there being a master plan. There is no conscious plan as such. We live from day to day, maximising our energy consumption just like any other living creature. Therefore when Mankind discovered this ancient source of stored sunlight energy we were destined to use it all up. By doing so, we temporarily increased the carrying capacity of the world. Like any finite resource, fossil energy will eventually be used up and the carrying capacity of the world will return to pre-fossil fuel times. This will happen by the end of this century (ie within the potential lifetime of anyone being born today) but doesn’t mean extinction.

Maybe. Probably. But I am a big believer in uncertainty. What if sustained fusion energy comes on line sometime in our unpredictable future? Science is accelerating exponentially. Or some other unforeseen breakthrough. What about tapping into all that dark energy lurking around out there? Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of DARPA scientists and other super nerds?
(The Shadow knows….)

Could be, but the new source better deliver a lot more joules than are needed to extract the source. And, frankly, I have read nothing on fusion that suggests that would happen for many decades to come.

I have read material on the controlled fusion project afoot. Birthing a little Sun on Earth is an engineering challenge. Getting the Genie to do your bidding while confining him to a magnetic bottle may frustrate our techno-magicians for an age or so. But who knows – we are playing at the dizzying edge of profound possibilities hitherto undreamed of. Maybe we will get lucky? But would that be a good thing? More energy in the hands of a species that has proved itself incompetent to deal with ever greater sources of power…..

mike k, we might get lucky, but I doubt it and it would not matter – cheap abundant energy will only speed the strip mining of the planet and increase the pace of the 6th mass extinction. Science is not the problem, we are. Our technological evolution has out paced our psychological evolution by orders of magnitude. It’s already too late for most and maybe everyone. Looks like we are experiencing diminishing returns on our innovations too.

You Call this Progress?

“One of the prevailing narratives of our time is that we are innovating our way into the future at break-neck speed. It’s just dizzying how quickly the world around us is changing. Technology is this juggernaut that gets ever bigger, ever faster, and all we need to do is hold on for the wild ride into the infinitely cool. Problems get solved faster than we can blink.

But I’m going to claim that this is an old, outdated narrative. I think we have a tendency to latch onto a story of humanity that we find appealing or flattering, and stick with it long past its expiration date. Many readers at this point, in fact, may think that it’s sheer lunacy for me to challenge such an obvious truth about the world we live in. Perhaps this will encourage said souls to read on—eager to witness a spectacular failure as I attempt to pull off this seemingly impossible stunt.

The (slightly overstated) claim is that no major new inventions have come to bear in my 45-year lifespan. The 45 years prior, however, were chock-full of monumental breakthroughs.”

Apneaman – I agree with everything you wrote above. Misuse of power is a key element in our march to very probable extinction. Science and technology have been a big part of accelerating that process. And IMHO good riddance if we fail to reform
our vicious evil, and destructive ways. Only a world based on love and higher values would be worth saving. If we don’t create that, then we should be gone, and do all the other living beings a favor for a change. Kind of a last overdue apology, “Sorry we fucked you all over so badly, but we will leave you now to such peace as you can still enjoy.”

Mike K,
I so agree with your sentiments. Our species can look at itself & has the ability to see what it’s doing but it won’t change it’s ways. It’s full steam ahead in this ship of fools until the bitter end & from my perspective the sooner it hits a financial sea mine & sinks the better. To say that to most people who worship the power and anthropocentric arrogance of our species is treason to humanity so I generally keep my mouth closed when in the presence of the zombies, which is most of the time as folk who “get” it are few & far between.
The sad part is there’s been much humanity can be proud of with art, music etc…but so much of that has become perverted & introverted to reflect a culture that only talks to itself, about itself & worships itself & will probably continue to do so until it’s having the final chow down on the last diseased rabbit in a burnt out woodland…………………………………………

how cool down people and their consumption or ego creativity? put the minds in a new corsettes to reduce our all hyperfast activities? when the electronic mass media opium will windle down or higher and higher dosis of social media will not be able to cool us down or hold us in fear? artificial lights kept us up and busy – maybe first powerdown these uppers to cool the ego-psyche loop down – later more drastically with real opium so the masses can drift away from their daily hyperdestructive activity until we reduced ourself into a dark age for our über ego with no more history and low ‘creative’ activities…

“It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them… There is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.”

Sir Alexander Fleming – discoverer of penicillin

New ‘superbug’ gene found in animals, people in China

“London | Reuters — A new gene that makes bacteria highly resistant to a last-resort class of antibiotics has been found in people and pigs in China — including in samples of bacteria with epidemic potential, researchers said Wednesday.

The discovery was described as “alarming” by scientists, who called for urgent restrictions on the use of polymyxins, a class of antibiotics that includes the drug colistin and is widely used in livestock farming.
“All use of polymyxins must be minimised as soon as possible and all unnecessary use stopped,” said Laura Piddock, a professor of microbiology at Britain’s Birmingham University who was asked to comment on the finding.”

Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future
After 85 years, antibiotics are growing impotent. So what will medicine, agriculture and everyday life look like if we lose these drugs entirely?

“As a biologist, Fleming knew that evolution was inevitable: sooner or later, bacteria would develop defenses against the compounds the nascent pharmaceutical industry was aiming at them. But what worried him was the possibility that misuse would speed the process up. Every inappropriate prescription and insufficient dose given in medicine would kill weak bacteria but let the strong survive. (As would the micro-dose “growth promoters” given in agriculture, which were invented a few years after Fleming spoke.) Bacteria can produce another generation in as little as twenty minutes; with tens of thousands of generations a year working out survival strategies, the organisms would soon overwhelm the potent new drugs.”

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Who really pulls the strings?:

The megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. The bought-and-paid politicians sitting in Washington are simply the marionettes of the corporations and financial elite who are dictating public policy and regulations.

Preserving the Status Quo

There is no right wing or left wing, only the aristocracy and the serfs (a vertical paradigm).
To know this is to be like a fish who has broken the surface of the water, realizing he was in water the whole time.

A Kabuki Play

"What we have, in what passes for US democracy in 2012, is a kabuki play that Cicero put to papyrus 1948 years earlier. All historical empires and war aggressors have used propaganda to claim their looting and police states were necessary and helpful to the 99%. Instead, a sorrowful history tells us they were almost always for the sole benefit of the 1%."
- Albert Bates

Professor Rick Wolff explains why growth has become a focus of our modern political system. He describes how inequality is created by the way our enterprises are organized. Because a significant portion of our lives are at work, how would our society look if democratic businesses became the new normal? What would be the environmental and social implications […]

The Firefly Gathering offers a wide range of classes for adults and children on primitive skills, permaculture, nature connection, and eco-homesteading that are designed to be able to be applied to enhance everyday life. The gathering gathers a bevy of inspiring, amazing people. Besides classes it offers evening entertainment, basic infrastructure, and on-si […]

Throughout his life James Joyce attempted to escape – from war, religion, convention, narrative structure, language… “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight.… Read more

A nation’s stories play a large part in its future. Established ideas become conventional wisdom in social institutions. The institutions then draw on this wisdom when enacting public policy.… Read more